Michel-André

Sorry if my post was confusing.

Here is my situation. 1) I'm the OEM vendor of a piece of software that controls a specific piece of hardware we sell. (i.e 3890XP Control Program) 2) We had to move from one OS to another ( i.e OS/2 => Linux, we chose SuSE's SLES 9 and now SLES 10) 3) Our customers buy SLES from Novell and the 3890XP software and HW from us. 4) The install method MUST be CD. a) Machines do not support DVD's b) We can't require the customer to setup an install server to do

Michel-André Thanks for you help. What ended up working was to use the SLES 9 kernel,inird and root image with grub for the booting of the CD. Then I backported the SLES 10 autoinst.xml to the SLES 9 format and removed the paterns and replaced them with the individual packages. The SLES 9 yast installer with /yast/order was able to install the SLES 10 Now the only thing left is can I get it to work on one CD. But that is not a issue, if it becomes too complicated we can just have a SLES 9 CD and a SLES 10 CD version. Again thanks. Michel-André 03/27/2008 07:13 PM To Adam Hawks/Charlotte/IBM@IBMUS cc Subject Re: [opensuse-autoinstall] Custom autoInstall boot CD for multiple distributions (SLES 9 & SLES10) Hi Adam! In around 2003 I was working for a telecom company and using RedHat 6.9 & 7.3. We had exactly the same problem: install RedHat then install the company software. I did 2 CDs. The first one containing the OS and the second one the software. I was using kickstart to do the job. I modified the kickstart then redo the iso to contain the new kickstart. Kickstart is the same as autoyast. In SLES10-SP1 & SP2-beta, you can use a kickstart file and convert it to autoyast. I beleive then that it is possible to do the exact same thing with SLES-10 as I did with RedHat. It was just a matter of calling a script file at the end of the kickstart. Does the installation of your software done with one script file of some kind? I will have a look in my backup stuff and come back to you. Michel-André ********************************************* Adam Hawks a écrit : the

install's 5) The installer's are hardware maintenance guys and do not have much knowledge of OS's or Linux.

What I'm trying to achieve 1) A bootable CD that will start the install and contain our profiles 2) A grub menu that will automatically select the right profile based on

the menu selection. 3) The booted CD to then ask for SLES 10 CD's as needed and our CD when our software is able to install. 4) After initial install of SLES and our software, on first boot kick off a configuration to finalize the hardware settings. (this one will happen

if our software gets installed and SLES was configured properly). 5) Get both SLES 9 and SLES 10 automation from one CD.

For SLES 9 I'm able to accomplish parts 1-4 with our CD being bootable with a profile.xml and grub.

For SLES 10 I can't seem to figure out how to get our CD to boot and then request SLES 10 CD's when needed. If I let SLES 10 boot then I don't get a grub menu with autoyast pre-confgured, and the profiles have to be on floppy.

Getting our profiles on a CD that is bootable with grub and starts the autoyast process is my problem. The one solution at the moment I see is remastering the SLES 10 CD #1 with my profiles and a new grub menu. My problem with this is a matter of support. If I understand Novell's support policy, then this is now my distribution and I have to support it. We need a solution that keeps Novell supporting the Linux and us supporting the 3890XP Control program.

Sorry to be so wordy. I hope the details of my problem are more clear now. I didn't see anything in your reply that would solve my problem. It may be that there is no solution.

Thanks

Adam W. Hawks T/L: 794-4033 Office: 704 594-4033

Michel-André 03/27/2008 04:43 PM

To Adam Hawks/Charlotte/IBM@IBMUS cc opensuse-autoinstall@opensuse.org Subject Re: [opensuse-autoinstall] Custom autoInstall boot CD for multiple distributions (SLES 9 & SLES10)

For sure the solution is here:

I did a document on how to setup an installation server in french but with lot of screen shots. http://www.micronator.org/PDF/PXE-installation-de-SLES10-SP1.pdf

It is based in english on: http://www.novell.com/connectionmagazine/2007/q3/tech_talk_6.html

This will show you how to create the installation server. You will save a little the planet by not using CD or DVD and it is much faster that way.

The first document, the one I did, also describe how to use menu.c32 and

the default file. I did installed an installation server on both SLES-10sp1 and OpenSuse-10.3. On OpenSuSE-10.3, you have to install: yast2-instserver Even if it is in french, as I wrote above there is a lot of screen shots

so it should be understandable.

On both of them, syslinux is outdated and give a cosmetical error but it

still work. If you want to get rid of the error, remove the original syslinux but leave the mtools. Then download the latest sysliux ans install it on the server to get the

pxelinux.0. Put that file in the tftp/pxelinux.cfg. The error only shows up if you use TEXT HELP...ENDTEXT. If you don't use it then forget about the new syslinux and use the one that is installed. Anyway the error is cosmetical only. *******************

ADD-ON

then go to:

http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Creating_Add-On_Media_with_YaST

to understand the ADD-ON. Same URL as below.

Don't forget to sign the add-on. I think your error is from signing the iso. Then put the add-on iso on the installation server.

I did an installation that uses add-on for OES2. It produced an autoinstall.xml. The section below is what it add for the add-on. <add-on> <listentry> http://192.168.1.149/install/OES/CD1 <product>OPEN_ENTERPRISE_SERVER</product> / </listentry> </add-on> ******************* AUTOINSTALL.XML The best way to produce a good autoinstall.xml is to use VMware. It works on M$ and on Linux. For M$, see: http://www.micronator.org/PDF/InstallationDeVMwareServeur_WINDOWS.pdf For Linux, see: http://www.micronator.org/PDF/InstallationDeVMwareServeur_LINUX.pdf Ask a few licenses, it is free and they don't check the email address.

For linux, the best way is to get the RPM file. Install it then run vmware-pl to configure it. Take all the defaults. You need gcc installed so to be able to compile modules when you run vmware-pl. At some point it will ask the license, just copy & paste it when you run

vmware-pl.

Then create a virtual machine and installed your SLES-10. At the end, when it ask to clone the system, click yes. It will put the autoinstall.xml in /root. Copy and save the file, you will see how it did for the ADD-ON etc. Modify it for each different machine you want to install. Easier but longer way is to use the MAC adddress for the file name, or add a line in menu.c32 for each different machine you want to install. ******************* AUTOYAST autoyast=tftp://IP-Address-Of-TFTP/pxelinux.cfg/myprofile.xml ******************* VNC

I tried it and it realy installed hand-free. I was watching the installation with vncviewer. vnc=1 vncpassword=your-password *******************

Voilà, that should work.

If it doesn't work then send me an email and we can connect together to show you how to do it.

Good luck

Michel-André ************************************************ Adam Hawks a écrit : Ok. I'm making progress with the add-on media for SLES 10. But I'm still stuck on how do I create my own add-on media with my autoyast profile.xml on it and get SLES 10 to use it. My whole goal is to fully automate the system and add-on install in grub

menu selection.

If I put autoyast=cd:///myprofile.xml I get a message from SLES 10 that it

can't find/read my profile since the SLES 10 CD #1 is what has booted.

If I copy the /boot folder from SLES 10 to my add-on CD and put autoyast=file:///myprofile.xml in the isolinux.cfg file the YaST install

system finds my profile but then can't instialize the software catalogs since it doesn't know about the SLES 10 media yet.

Is there a solution to this delima or am I forced into the creation of a

floppy with the profile.xml on it and manually typing the "autoyast=floppy

install=cd" on the grub boot line?

Try this. It works

http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Creating_Add-On_Media_with_YaST

Michel-André ******************************

Steffen Winterfeldt a écrit : On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, Adam Hawks wrote:

I changed the boot CD to have a SLES 9 and a SLES 10 kernel and initrd. And since root is in different locations on SLES 9 vs SLES 10 then linuxrc loads the corresponding install system. YaST is correctly starting with the install system for the correct SLES and reads the profiles without failing.

I STILL have the problem that my CD doesn't request the SLES 9 or SLES 10's CD #1 when initializing the software catalogs.

With SLES 8 you had the SLES 8 CD #1 and the United Linux CD #1 and you could boot from either one to install depending on whether you wanted

SLES

or United Linux. My situation is like the SLES 8 model where I have my RPM's that need to

be installed on top of SLES 9, SLES 10 during the install. The only difference is I need to support both SLES 9 and SLES 10 as the base product.

So I guess my basic problem is two fold. 1) How do you correctly layout a CD distribution with multiple products (mine on top of SLES 9 and mine on top of SLES 10)? 2) How do you create a boot CD that is an add-on to the existing SLES CD's

without remastering CD #1 of SLES?

Hm, I can't comment on the required layout for add-on CDs but if you remove the 'root' images from your CD, linuxrc assumes you have a special boot CD and will ask for CD1. Maybe that helps.

Steffen

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